Perseverance, leadership, community mark Weston High's graduation

Comment

MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, MA

Writer

Posted Jun. 6, 2014 at 9:04 PM

Posted Jun. 6, 2014 at 9:04 PM

» Social News

By Carole LaMond

Daily News Correspondent

WESTON - The Weston High School Class of 2014 is a class that was forged by tragedy, both global and deeply personal, but those events have created a class of leaders, a class that has prevailed and found joy in community, speakers at Friday night's commencement said.

"Tragedy has been a consistent element of our school years," said Ilaria Anna Santangelo, tragedy "that changed the world as we knew it" with the terrorist attacks on Sept.11, 2001, just one week into the start of their kindergarten year.

The tsunami in Thailand, Hurricane Katrina, the shootings at Newtown and the Boston Marathon bombings all marked their time as students, "but we grieved and we persevered," and in the process "came together as a class, as a school and as a community," she said.

The sudden loss of 9 year-old classmate Patrick Devlin in 2005, was a tragedy that opened their hearts as a class.

"Patrick Devlin was able to shine a true light on our class," said Santangelo. "We persevere for those who cannot. As a class, we persevered for Patrick."

"As a class we prevailed. So go into life with that same attitude," said Santangelo to her classmates.

A true leader is someone who makes leaders, said Principal Anthony Parker, and that was never more apparent than when the senior class led an assembly to address an incident of racist graffiti at the school.

"That day you made leaders, and taught me that leadership is not based on age, wisdom or experience. It is based on a desire to serve the wider community," said Parker.

Superintendent Cheryl Maloney also saluted the 212 members of the Class of 2014 at Weston High School’s 146th graduation ceremony Friday.

Class President Clark Kenneth Eglinton brought some levity – and a few silly puns – in his address to the class. He also took a selfie of himself with the class, a word he noted came up when he Googled "2014 is the year of the ____" as a way to get ideas for his speech.

In years hence, said Eglinton, when his class thinks of the year 2014 "we are going to remember our class by our character."

"For as long as we’ve been in the school system people have been talking about us, we’re a big class, a loud class," said Eglinton. "The class of 2014, they’ll talk about us for a long time. We did good."

English teacher Lisa Alcock delivered a last lesson to the students, telling them she hopes they have learned the importance of story from the heroic journeys of characters in the literature they studied.

Page 2 of 2 - "Stories matter, your stories matter," said Alcock who noted that heroes come in all shapes and sizes. "You are the heroes of whatever story you choose to write."

Alcock used "The Odyssey," a text the class studied in ninth grade, to present 10 important rules to remember on their heroic journey through life.

Alcock spoke of the magic cape that helped Odysseus on his journey.

"To be truly heroic you need your superhero cape. The point is, every one of you has a cape, each one of you has attributes to carry you through life," said Alcock. "A hero’s journey always has been, and always will be, about overcoming obstacles with the help of that magic cape."